Last summer, the popular website PhD Comics invited graduate students from around the world to record and submit two-minute descriptions of their theses. Of more than 200 entries submitted, 12 were chosen to be animated and published on PhD Comics TV. Winners included Or Graur, a graduate student at Tel Aviv University and the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the Museum, where he works with Curator Michael Shara in the Astrophysics Department. Watch the animation, called The Secret Lives (and Deaths) of Stars.

From carrots to cassava, root vegetables are enjoying a culinary renaissance; this Thursday, December 13, at 6:30 pm, noted New York chef and Food Network star Alex Guarnaschelliwill be at the Museum for a special Adventures in the Global Kitchen program devoted to how to cook and eat root vegetables, why they’re a lynchpin of biodiversity, and much more. She will be joined by Eleanor Sterling, co-curator of the Museum's new exhibition Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture.

In the Museum's new special exhibition Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture, an early edition of the American classic Joy of Cooking, first published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer, is featured in a wall of cookbooks, from ancient to modern. We recently spoke to John Becker, a great-grandson of Rombauer, who with others in his family still works to edit and develop the "all-purpose" cookbook.